Photographing The Desert in HDR

HDR Photography, or High Dynamic Range Photography is widely considered the best way to capture vibrant colors and create high contrast photos without blowing out the brightest parts of an image.

The image above was taken at the Strip in Downtown Las Vegas. It was one of my first attempts at HDR Photography.

The process of capturing HDR Photography is quite simple in concept, but it is tedious and time consuming in practice, however the results can be spectacular and are well worth the effort.

The key thing to remember is that you'll shoot multiple copies of the same image, using different aperature settings for each iteration in order to get different exposures of your subject. This is what's known as "Bracketing" and this allows you to capture different highlights and shadows that would normally be washed out or blown out in a single iteration of an image.

The next step in HDR Photography is post processing. Many purist photographers consider this cheating. It's not cheating, it's simply taking advantage of all the tools available for modern photography to create the most interesting and vibrant images possible.

Regardless of the controversy, anyone who looks at an image produced using HDR Photography, with an open mind will agree, minimal skills in post processing can help an average photographer produce good photos, and a good photographer produce great photos once they've learned the necessary skills.

There are many applications available for processing your photos; I personally use Camera Raw, Adobe Bridge and Photoshop on almost all of my photos.

For more in-depth guides on HDR Photography, I recommend reading Trey Ratcliff's blog. Trey is one of the World's best HDR Photographers and he's written many articles on the subject of HDR Photography.